Mumbai, Algerian-French artist and curator Kader Attia has proposed reclaiming human sovereignty over dreams and memory in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, placing their relationship with repair at the centre of the seventh edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
Attia, curator of the upcoming edition, outlined his vision at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai on Saturday, sharing the ideas that will shape the biennale, scheduled to open on December 12, 2027.
The artist-curator placed the relationship between dreams, memory and repair at the heart of his proposition.
Contrasting the unpredictability of dreams and artistic experiences with the increasingly predictive nature of artificial intelligence, Attia suggested that art could offer a space to reclaim control over the sources of human imagination and allow possibilities of individual and collective repair.
“The Biennale will bring together artistic experiences that seek to reclaim our sovereignty over the sources of our dreams, while allowing artworks to enter the viewer’s inner life in unexpected ways and open up possibilities of repair,” he said.
Attia’s presentation began with dreams and the memory traces from which they emerge.
“These traces shape both the inner individual and the external social structures that surround us, and are central to the reciprocal exchange that makes us porous beings,” he explained.
Tracing the history of this exchange, he said that humanity’s evolution is not only biological.
“To survive the wildness of nature, human beings, a physically weaker species, began to gather and share memory culturally, materially and intellectually, in the form of technology,” he said.
He added that this is deeply paradoxical because as technology became more powerful, the less control humanity had over it.
He drew attention towards contemporary tensions, as algorithmic learning machines and AI harvest memory traces for the attention economy, resulting in a loss of control over the sources of individual dreams and imagination.
Attia also situated his proposition within Kochi’s history as a port that connected the region to destinations across the Indian Ocean, bringing with it centuries of cultural exchanges, invasions and colonial encounters involving the Portuguese, Dutch and British.
Citing Gabonese sociologist Joseph Tonda’s “Afrodystopia: Life in Someone Else’s Dream”, he suggested that descendants of colonised subjects live in the “dream of the empire”.
“But it is possible to reclaim selfhood and individuality from this colonial dream,” he added, recalling Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s essay “Sultana’s Dream”, in which patriarchy is reversed through the medium of dream.
“The art world is one of the last spaces where society co-individuates itself. Our subjectivity is fragmented, like the internet, an intensely fragmented landscape, yet there we are tracked by the algorithm.
“Exhibitions are important because they produce emotions, activating new traces in our minds. That is how we produce traces for the future. In the same way we are the traces of our ancestors and of the millions of anonymous subjects who preceded us”, he said.
Organised by the Kochi Biennale Foundation, the event was attended by members of the Biennale community, including its president Jitish Kallat, who joined Attia in a conversation following the presentation.
Kallat said Attia’s proposition brought questions of dreams, memory and repair to the centre of the Biennale, while examining who owns human imagination at a time when inner lives are increasingly captured, simulated and predicted.
“Kochi, a port shaped by centuries of crossings, gives that question a particular inflection,” he said.
Venu V, chairperson of the Kochi Biennale Foundation, said Attia’s proposition set a compelling tone for the 2027 edition.
“Kader Attia’s multi-layered proposition sets a compelling tone for KMB 2027. By engaging with history, memory, colonial legacies, and the possibilities of repair, it makes art not merely an aesthetic experience but a means of reflection, dialogue, and understanding,” Venu said.
The seventh edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale is scheduled to run from December 12, 2027 to March 31, 2028, in Kerala’s Fort Kochi and Mattancherry.
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